Tag: Psychiatry and Psychiatrists

Individuals with severe mental disorders endure abuse all over the world, caged, warehoused in institutions, and imprisoned. But individuals living chained to trees or concrete blocks in areas of Africa are some of the most trapped, forgotten people on the planet.

One method to finish or lessen the reliance upon this practice, some experts have contended, is always to introduce Western psychiatry — supplying the shackled with diagnoses and medicine. One religious leader in Ghana made the decision the idea, despite concerns concerning the drugs and intimations of cultural imperialism, was worth testing. He ran a retreat, or prayer camp, where lots of everyone was chained.

Now, in the present publication of the The British Journal of Psychiatry, a group of Ghanaian and American researchers report outcomes of a test in the camp, the very first controlled trial of medications among shackled individuals with mental problems in West Africa.

The findings were mixed: Medications, mostly for psychosis, blunted day-to-day signs and symptoms of hallucinations and delusional thinking. But it didn’t reduce the amount of time everyone was locked in chains in the camp.

“We will not medicate our way to avoid it of these types of human legal rights abuses,” stated Dr. Robert Rosenheck, a professor of psychiatry at Yale College School Of Medicine, who designed the trial and it was a co-author from the report. In West Africa, countless individuals with mental illness reside in awful conditions. One organization is fighting for any new method of treatment. This video was based on The Worldwide Reporting Center.Printed OnMarch. 11, 2015CreditImage by Linda Givetash

Dr. Angela Ofori-Atta, an affiliate professor of psychiatry in the College of Ghana Med school and Dentistry, brought the research and arranged use of chained participants in the prayer camp. She stated the treatment created some dramatic individual enhancements — one man, shackled for ten years, grew to become strikingly lucid the very first time in memory — which more…